November 2011

November 30, 2011

The 1964 classic “My Fair Lady” has been playing in my mind since yesterday. In particular, I was reminiscing about its lovingly couched sexism and chauvinism.

When I first saw it in the late 1970s, my immediate reaction was to want to see it again immediately. In that, it was quite similar to “The King and I” which too I watched again instantly. Both great films, notwithstanding some of their attitudes.

For me, it was akin to eating a particularly delicious vada pav because I always go for a second immediately after that. It is as if I am trying confirm that my first response was correct and genuine.

For someone who does not particularly like musicals, this was a very unusual reaction. I have since understood why I liked “My Fair Lady” and “The King and I” so much. It is the delightful self-absorption of the protagonists—Professor Henry Higgins (a superb Rex Harrison) and King Mongkut of Siam (a superb Yul Brynner). For the purposes of today’s post I shall focus only on “My Fair Lady” and one particular bit from the movie.

I doubt if there is a more compelling example of male chauvinism and sexism having been made so charming and attractive and, dare I say, something to aspire to than this song written by the legendary Alan Jay Lerner. It was obvious that Lerner wanted to know more about women and understand what women want because he married eight times. So some of what he says through the medium of Professor Higgins has to have carried personal insights.

In my extended family there were many men who were unapologetically male chauvinists who practiced sexism as a matter of their birth right. Perhaps that explains why Higgins felt so familiar.

“Why can’t a woman be more like a man?” wonders/asks/ponders Higgins as if it is the most obvious thing women should be. The way Harrison’s intones that question it sounds like merely posing it is sufficient to settle the age-old gender conflict. In the scene Harrison keeps going in and coming out of his room. He goes in only so that he can come out with progressively harsh indictment of the female gender. For a moment I thought that neatly stacked inside the bedroom were his borderline misogynies, a new batch of which he brings out every time he emerges from it.

“Men are so honest, So thoroughly square, Eternally noble, Historically fair” is what Higgins thinks of men.

And women? Well, “Women are irrational, that’s all there is to that. Their heads are full of cotton, hay and rags. They are nothing but exasperating, irritating, vacillating, calculating, agitating, maddening and infuriating hags.”

Further down the song he says:

“Why is thinking something women never do? And why is logic never even tried? Straightening up their hair is all they ever do. Why don't they straighten up the mess that's inside?

The song goes on in that vein, including at one point Higgins asking of his housekeeper, Mrs. Pearce (Mona Washbourne), as he comes down the staircase. “Mrs. Pearce, you are a woman,” Harrison says; and the expression on his face is ever so subtle in its realization that there is indeed a woman in the house and he could always ask her the question that has been bothering him, “Why can’t a woman be more like a man?”

The most troubling aspect of this song is that despite its content it remains so eminently watchable. I would attribute that almost entirely to Harrison’s performance and to a somewhat lesser extent to Colonel Hugh Pickering (the very Brrritish Wilfrid Hyde-White). For instance, the scene where Pickering calls a friend at the Home Office and says,"Whitehall, seven two double four please”. There is such grandness and expansiveness in that otherwise mundane request that he could well be calling on the Viceroy of India to resign. No one does grandiosity better than the English.

On an unrelated note, I have always found the dynamic between Higgins and Pickering very similar to that between Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson. There is something about quirky English gentlemen and their perfect foils that is so cinematic. Someday I might write a but more about this equation.

November 29, 2011

In keeping with the glorious tradition of overanalyzing everything on this blog, let me make a few comments on the interview that CNN’s Wolf Blitzer had yesterday with Herman Cain even as an Atlanta businesswoman was preparing to claim a 13-year-long relationship with the Republican president candidate.

I was struck by the rather Freudian usage of the words such as “teasing” and “premature” not to mention that the woman was claiming a 13-year-long relationship whose definitions Cain disagreed with.

Wolf, “Was this an affair?”

“No,” said Cain.

“There was no sex,” persisted Wolf.

“No,” said Cain.

That opened the door for Blitzer, whom Cain had mistakenly called Blitz only a few days earlier during a CNN TV debate.

So Blitz persisted, “None?”. I almost envisioned Wolf nudge-nudging, wink-winking, with a thought balloon carrying the words, “ No sex at all? Really?! Why oh why?”.

What is “None” supposed to mean in this context? I can guess but what would be the point of that?

Then it was pointed out by Blitzer how the Atlanta TV station that broke the story had been “teasing for the past hour or so.” So an hour-long tease was already underway even as Cain was talking to Blitzer.

Then came the suggestion from Blitzer, “Without giving us her name tell us what was she like? The nature of the friendship.” What was she like?? As in what, Wolf?

Cain, “No, not gonna to do it, Wolf. That would be premature.”

Wolf, “Did you work with her?”

Cain, “No, that would be premature.”

Can you figure out the meaning of premature in these two contexts? Is Cain saying it would be premature to say what she was like? Or is he saying that it is premature for him to say what she was like before she said what their relationship was like?

And what about the second premature? Is Cain saying that it would be premature to say that she worked with him? Perhaps he is saying everything that happens with him these days is premature articulation.

November 28, 2011

While an inordinately large number of web searchers still end up on my blog looking for “Savita Bhabhi’s boobs”, once in a while I do get rather intriguing visits. Yesterday, I was struck by someone from Many Farms, Arizona in the US looking for “Ilyas kashmiri whereabouts.” (See reader number 2)

For those of you who may not keep track of such things, Ilyas Kashmiri was an Al Qaeda/Harkat ul Jihad al Islami leader who was reportedly killed for the second time on June 3 this year during a drone strike on an orchard in South Waziristan. The same Kashmiri was also reportedly killed in September, 2009 in a drone strike. It seems he was indeed killed the second time around.

Kashmiri has figured in this blog several times because he was also one of the seven names in the second superseding indictment in Chicago that charged them with involvement both the 2008 Mumbai case as well as the abortive attack on the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten which published cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed offensive to Muslims in September, 2005.

There is nothing particularly odd about someone from Many Farms being interested in finding out the whereabouts of Kashmiri. I am writing about it because this morning I did not feel like writing much else and thought this would be a good space filler. So there.

In a sense it is gratifying to know that people may be checking out my blog for something more than just the physical endowments of a fictional Indian porn character.

November 27, 2011

Sony Entertainment Television’s popular show ‘Andaaz’ featured my interview the other day. The subject was my book “Dalai Lama: Man Monk Mystic”. You may cue it to the 8th minute to watch it if you go to the original link above. Watching it is entirely voluntary.

Far be it for me to review my own interview in my own blog but I suppose it is not far enough. The interview does nothing to challenge my longstanding observation that I sound far too earnest. The timber of my voice has that unnecessary urgency that irritates me.

Also, I must crane my neck a bit more because it looks as if there is nothing between my shoulders and one and a half chins.

I have smoker’s teeth without ever having smoked. Evidently, the Dalai Lama book has not earned me enough to pay a visit or two or three to get my teeth bleached.

What I like the best about this video are my clothes. They have the style of a journalist who was on the verge of making some good money but was pulled back by circumstances at the last moment.

All that said, what I am saying is quite passable.

(I have had to optimize the size of the video in order to upload it here. Hence the resolution has suffered.)

November 26, 2011

As a journalist who cut his professional teeth in Bombay in 1981 I felt terrible being peripheral to the terrorist siege and attacks of November 26, 2008, on the city. Watching the mayhem from the suburban comforts of Naperville in Midwestern America felt strangely irresponsible.

Things changed dramatically less than a year later when David Coleman Headley, one of the main plotters behind the attacks, was arrested at Chicago’s O’Hare international airport here and plead guilty by federal investigators in return for a deal that took the death penalty as well as his extradition to India off the table. He was a resident of Chicago in as much as someone like him can be a resident of any place. It is an odd thing to say but when the arrest happened followed by the disclosures of how deeply Headley was involved in the planning of the attacks, I felt a sense of having been reinstated to the story.

A journalist has a reflexive need to be part of any major story and if the story happens to be so close to one’s area of interest as the Mumbai attacks were, then that need becomes almost unmanageable. Come to think of it, I have been on the Chicago end of the Mumbai story ever since October 9, 2009, arrest of Headley.

One got to see Headley firsthand during his testimony against his childhood friend and co-accused Tahawwur Hussain Rana in May, this year. I wrote about my impressions of the man on May 25 and they bear repeating here today.

“Key Mumbai terror plotter David Coleman Headley talks about death and destruction with the aloof air of a laboratory technician mixing various chemicals to see which combination would be most combustible.

If there was ever a plan to showcase his remorse about Mumbai, his two days of testimony in the federal court of Judge Harry D. Leinenweber in Chicago, it is going in the opposite direction. Here is a man who says the Mumbai attack evened scores for the bombing of his school in December, 1971 during the India-Pakistan war, that led to the creation of Bangladesh. The man sure holds long grudges.

One had heard about Headley’s cool and measured composure and one is getting to witness it now. As Assistant US Attorney Daniel Collins carefully walks him through all major and minor details of the Mumbai plot, Headley responds as if he has dropped by for a casual chat. His replies are precise, almost well-rehearsed. He remembers details of who said what years ago, making me wonder whether he is improvising it. He is under oath and improvisation is not an option. He cannot possibly wing it. And yet I find it hard to conceive of someone who can remember minute details about his dozens of meetings with the masterminds of the Mumbai attacks.

The man is clearly good at his chosen profession. That chosen profession may not be all that respectable but he gave his absolute best. Yesterday, for instance, while talking about his reconnaissance of various potential sites to strike, he spoke of Mumbai’s Siddhi Vinayak Temple. He visited the temple to shoot some surveillance video. While he was there it struck him that it would be a great idea to get some red and yellow threads that the faithful tie around their wrists. He carried those threads, described in the court with some liberty as bracelets, back to Pakistan and gave it to Sajid Mir, the Lashkar-e-Taiba operative who oversaw the training of the ten Mumbai attackers. They indeed wore those threads in order to blend in.”

In a separate news dispatch for the IANS wire on May 24, I found this to be particularly compelling:

“Headley's attorney John Theis sat in the front row as his client answered questions in somewhat muffled tones even while disclosing remarkable details.

At one point as he discussed the kind of conversations he had had with his Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) handler Sajid Mir, Headley said he was even told how to pray in order to avoid "mihrab", the dark spot that devout Muslim men have on their foreheads because of the regular friction with the floor while praying. The significance of this particular detail being that since Headley was to travel to Mumbai as a white American on a US passport, a mark like that on his forehead may arouse suspicion. As a result, he was advised to pray without touching his forehead to the ground.

Another seemingly minor but crucial detail that came to light during his four-hour-long testimony concerned the train arrival and departure announcements at Mumbai's Victoria Terminus or Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus.

Headley told the court that he pointed out to both Sajid Mir and Major Iqbal, a shadowy figure reportedly belonging to Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), that the announcements were made in English and Marathi. If the attackers did not know English, they could run into difficulty trying to find out when trains were arriving.”

Having left Mumbai a long time ago I am not qualified to comment on whether the city’s authorities have learnt any lessons from the attacks. From what I read in the Indian media, it does not appear to be the case. When you consider the level of planning that terrorists do, I am not sure if the law enforcement agencies are able to anticipate all the scenarios with equal meticulousness.

November 25, 2011

Indians, long deprived of the high-end shopping experience (being tongue-in-cheek) offered by Walmart, may soon be able to enjoy it firsthand. The Indian government has formally announced that it is opening up the country’s huge but largely disorganized retail sector to foreign direct investment.

Under the new policy announcement India will allow 51 percent foreign equity in multi-brand retail and 100 percent in single brand retail. What it means that retail chains selling multiple brands, such as Walmart, can now own 51 percent of its India operations, while single brand names such as Apple for instance can own their own stores 100 percent. This is a significant policy shift at a time when market watchers around the world have begun to wonder whether India is losing some of its shine.

In a country where even today groceries and farm produce come to you rather than you going to them, it is anybody’s guess whether big box retail will succeed. The most important reason why it might succeed is because of the sheer diversity of the shopper demographics. While nothing beats ordering your weekly supplies on mobile phone to be delivered at your doorstep, there is something to be said about going to a giant big box store and being able to buy everything in one shot.

One of the daunting challenges that I see for western retail giants setting up shop in India is finding the right real estate for it. Open spaces where a massive store of Walmart’s size can be located with its parking space and inventory delivery facility will be a major challenge.

The new policy requires that such stores can be opened only in cities with more than one million population, which necessarily means that real estate will be expensive. Only 53 cities out of a total of 8000 urban centers meet the population requirement. The Indian government will also insist on a minimum investment of $100 million, which may not be that difficult to spend considering the land prices. Of the $100 million minimum, 50 percent will have to be spent on developing rural infrastructure and 30 percent on sourcing from small and medium enterprises, according to Commerce Minister Anand Sharma.

On the face of it, it seems the Indian government has taken enough care to ensure that retail giants guarantee local economic and employment growth that makes this a politically sound decision in the long run. Notwithstanding that there is already opposition to the decision from those who fear that retail giants will destroy millions of mom and pop stores and farmers’ markets in the country. Some are already getting nostalgic about a shopping experience provided by produce markets such as the one below.

In a country where some estimates say nearly 50 percent of fruit and vegetable produce gets wasted because of a lack of cold storage and efficient supply chain, the policy shift should be welcomed. Unfortunately for urban dwellers, who see a great romance in going to a farmers’ market and individually selecting each cucumber or lime, do not recognize how hard the cycle is from cultivating the produce to reaching them to the market.

Perhaps as a uniquely Indian feature retail giants can have stores which recreate the atmosphere of a farmers’ market inside the box stores.

November 24, 2011

Watching an “irate” Sikh man slap India’s Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar on camera has revived an old question in my mind. Why is it that, unlike most physical assaults, a slap on the face carries so much humiliation with it?

Having been slapped once as a 10-year-old by a school teacher I have some experience of what it feels like. My working hypothesis on a slap and humiliation is that because it involves one’s face one feels particularly assaulted.

The main problem with a slap on the face is that one feels as if the imprint of the slapper’s hand is lingering on for days. Since the face is the most visible and expressive part (mostly, of course) of the human body we put considerable premium on it. Other than genitalia we consider our face to be a highly personal space. Nothing violates that personal space more effectively than a slap that lands right on it.

There is something very distilled and succinct and yet very articulate about a slap on the face as a device of public protest.

In the case of Pawar, the humiliation is multiplied several times because of who he is. He is one of India’s most powerful politicians who has for the better part of his adulthood wielded a great deal of influence. Until a few years ago he was frequently mentioned as one of the politicians likeliest to become India’s prime minister. Add to that the fact that these politicians operate in the rarefied air of high level security. They may expect to get shot but being slapped is not something that they cannot process easily. Of course, the fact that it was captured on camera (Isn’t everything captured on some camera these days?) ensures that it will live forever on the internet.

What a slap says is that the slapper could have done much more harm but consciously chose to deliver a resounding thud across the face. There is something very discriminating about a slap. It is both very refined and very crude at once.

Watching the video of the assailant named Harvinder Singh, who had attacked another former politician the other day, I felt he was trying too hard to look irate. As my friend, fellow journalist and fellow Facebook quick gun Kajal Basu says, “That was a very peaceful pissed-off Sikh, man, very peaceful Sikh.” Kajal makes a good point because you get the sense that assailant’s rage is fake or not as deep as he would like us to believe.

I also noticed that when he whips out what looks like a small kitchen knife (Some say it is supposed to be a kirpan of the kind Sikhs are required to ceremonially carry) and slashes his own wrist. I did not quite understand the purpose of slashing his own wrist. Was it to demonstrate that he is so angry at the state of affairs that he could have done that Pawar or that he is so disillusioned that he would rather take his life?

As for Pawar, I am sure he will remember this for the rest of his life. I do not know if this is his first slap ever (It is his first public slap, for sure) but that would leave an enduring impact.

P.S.: I can say with almost complete certainty that only in these columns would you find such utterly unnecessary deconstruction of life.

November 23, 2011

With Sebastian Rotella of the investigative news site ProPublica yet again raising doubts on whether the U.S. law enforcement agencies did enough to prevent the November 26, 2008, Mumbai terror attacks, I feel compelled to revisit something I have been asking for quite sometime now. The latest was a news analysis I wrote for the IANS wire July 21, 2010. I gratuitously reproduce the analysis below to demonstrate that I too have long been wise to the strange game that might have been played behind the scene.

“ By Mayank Chhaya, July 22, 2010 (IANS)

Chicago: The rash of leaks from disclosures made by key Mumbai terror plotter David Coleman Headley gives a glimpse into the reasons why he managed to strike a deal with the US authorities to take the death penalty and extradition to India off the table.

Although such conclusions can never be officially confirmed, it is obvious that the intelligence pay dirt that US investigators hit with Headley played a significant role in the Pakistani American getting a reasonable deal. It is equally obvious that in return for India not pushing for his extradition, Headley would have agreed to reveal the full extent of the alleged involvement of Pakistani intelligence in plotting the Mumbai terror attacks.

The assertion by India's National Security Adviser (NSA) Shivshankar Menon that "the real sense that has come out from Headley's interrogation is that the ISI was...literally controlling and coordinating it (the 26/11 attack) from the beginning till the end" is extraordinary for its lack of equivocation. He could not have said it with such finality without the backing of Headley's disclosures to a team of the National Investigation Agency (NIA) that interrogated him in the first week of June in Chicago.

Now that an official of the standing and consequence of Menon has said it, the leaks about the content of Headley's disclosures have the acquired sanctity which they would have otherwise lacked.

One troubling aspect of Headley’s disclosures relates to his unmolested visits to India despite the distinct likelihood that he was on the radar of US law enforcement agencies and possibly even being monitored because of his past brush with the law. In his earlier avatar as Daood Gilani was arrested and jailed on drug-related charges in 1997 but managed to find freedom by negotiating a deal with the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA).

Since then there have been reports that he was in fact enlisted as a DEA agent who changed his name officially from Daood Gilani to David Coleman Headley in 2005. However, it is inconceivable that this change of name and passport would have wiped off his past criminal record in the dossiers of the US law enforcement agencies. To that extent it is curious at the very least that Headley’s record may not have been notified to the Indian government when he visited the country five times between 2006 and 2008 with the specific purpose of scouting targets and plotting a major terrorist attack.

Given this background Headley did not really have any choice but to agree to disclose all that he knew about the Mumbai attacks not just to US investigators but eventually to Indian investigators as well. It is hard to establish whether New Delhi officially asked Washington to explain how Headley’s travels to India took place without the country’s authorities being told about his criminal record. Also, how someone who operated at the intersection of Islamic terror groups and elements of Pakistani intelligence escaped being uncovered in the post 9/11 world remains unexplained.”

It is still not clear how Headley managed to do what he did without anyone in India or the US making any visible effort to stand in the way. I am not suggesting anything conspiratorial at all but merely expressing a personal bafflement. Let’s just hope it is nothing egregious but mere incompetence.

According to Rotella, “US officials say Headley simply slipped through the cracks.” If that was indeed the case, it was one hell of a suspicious character to slip through the cracks. It would have had to be a gaping chasm rather than just cracks for something like this to happen.

As the Mumbai terror attacks approach their third anniversary three days from now, in some sense the crime has been settled with Ajmal Qasab, the lone surviving gunman awaiting death sentence in a Mumbai jail, and Headley convicted and incarcerated pending formal sentencing. However, it is doubtful whether one would ever find out the full measure of Headley’s involvement with US intelligence agencies.

I have now struggled to get something substantial out of US authorities for nearly two years but have failed so far. I have frequently run into information dead-ends. Under the circumstances, the best option is to occasionally engage in educated guesswork.

November 22, 2011

Scientists often legitimately distinguish themselves from the unquestioning adherents of any religion by saying that unlike the latter they are not driven by dogmas, certitudes and ultimate truths. That is mainly because science is about constant inquiry and forever keeping open the possibility that any theory, discovery or finding can turn out to be wrong.

It is from this standpoint that one is amused by some of the skepticism being expressed by physicists about the possibility that neutrinos could travel faster than light. While much of their skepticism is scientific and merited, some of it resembles the kind of dogmatic certitudes one sees among the religious and the faithful.

So troubled some of the scientists are at the prospect of Albert Einstein being proven wrong about the gospel that no particle of any mass can travel faster than light that they are threatening to do things which would be embarrassing if they were not amusing.

One such scientist is the otherwise respected Jim-al-Khalili, a professor of physics at the University of Surrey in England. He has said he would eat his boxer shorts live on television if Einstein’s law about the speed of light as being the unbreakable ceiling is proven wrong. I used to know a strident follower of the late Satya Sai Baba who would threaten never to wear her sari if he was ever proven wrong or fake. In the interest of accuracy, I never saw her without a sari. But somehow in that particular context her threat seemed not that out of place because it concerned faith. In the case of Professor al-Khalili, however, it is extraordinary.

To his credit though he is threatening to do something entertaining. I would like him to clarify whether he would eat a boxer shorts which is freshly laundered or something he wore overnight. Also, clarify whether they will be silk or cotton because that makes a difference in how easily he can swallow them. While at it, he might as well tell us what kind of beverage he would prefer with his boxer shorts to wash them down with.

I would argue that Einstein turning out to be wrong would be the most defining development of science in recent times and would merit eating an unlaundered boxer shorts.

On the larger issue of whether there are eternal scientific theories which are forever right, my guess is that the universe offers so many different situations that we have to get accustomed to the situational rightness of theories. May be there are no overarching absolute theories that hold true in every conceivable and inconceivable corner of the universe. Perhaps it is a puzzle that has no underlying reality. Or perhaps I am talking absolute non-sense. So, so like that.

November 21, 2011

Pakistani mobile phone users may no longer be able to send such texts (Note: These are imaginary messages on imaginary phones)

Pakistan’s mobile phone operators are reportedly considering a ban on the use of nearly 1700 “obscene” words. News reports out of Pakistan say that the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority has a list of 1695 words whose use in text messages it wants banned by the operators.

According to the AFP news agency, some of the words in English and Urdu include “quickie, fairy, Jesus Christ, monkey crotch, athlete’s foot, idiot, damn, deeper, four twenty, go to hell, harder, looser and no sex.”

I thought deep and hard about this and crafted this entirely fictional passage using all of the above words. I am guessing that expressions such as “monkey crotch” or “athlete’s foot” are originally in Urdu and are particularly colorful.

“Four twenty” most likely refers to the Section 420 of the country’s penal code that broadly refers to crooks, racketeers, swindlers, thieves, conmen of all manners. So here it is. I have used the proscribed terms in bold for your edification.

“It was 4.20 a.m. and the wee hour had blessed me with a boner. She lay next to me, deeper in sleep than ever before. Her lingerie had rolled up her right thigh teasingly revealing her yellow thong. Jesus Christ, I told myself, how can I resist her? With every passing second it was becoming harder (Get it? The pun? Harder) I woke her up and said, ‘Let’s have a quickie. I am told early morning sex is like a fairy tale.’ She was horrified by the suggestion and said, ‘You looser, you damn idiot, no sex now. You will get my athlete’s foot up your monkey crotch. Go to hell.’”

Incidentally, I have copyrighted this passage. I woke up up my intellectual property lawyer in California to take care of the copyright. I was surprised that he also used some of those very terms because I woke him up at 2.30 a.m. his time.

George Carlin had a list of seven words that one couldn’t say on American TV. He famously/notoriously (depending on your sensibilities) said, “Shit, Piss, Fuck, Cunt, Cocksucker, Motherfucker, and Tits. Those are the heavy seven. Those are the ones that'll infect your soul, curve your spine and keep the country from winning the war.”

If Carlin were born as a comic in Pakistan, he might have given up his profession saying, “Oh bencho… yeh to badi lambi fehrist hai.”